Food field trip, Museums and the Superbowl!! Bellissimo!

Hello my wonderful readers!!

In this episode, we go to Florence!

 Sorry I haven’t updated in a week, a lot has happened per usual!

So I feel like I never talk about my classes (there are more important things, just kidding….) haha- so I will now.

So I am taking 4 classes. Six credits worth of intensive Italian (so I’m basically fluent), and 3 additional classes.  My favorite, as I mentioned briefly before is “History and Culture of Foods in Italy.” Our professor is awesome (Simon, STILL amused by the meteo thing), and we have FOOD workshops, and go on FOOD fieldtrips. If you ever find a class as cool as this one, please let me know. I am actually learning a lot too. A good portion is about the history of Italy, so I’m learning about the past and current infrastructure of the country. Another professor Zach Nowak, helps out with some of the workshops and goes on some fieldtrips with us. He isn’t as blown away my meteo. In fact, he thinks it’s silly, and doesn’t understand it. Let’s just say someone had it coming. Every time he tried to bring it up I would attack him with what meteorology actually is. I also sent him some links which also demonstrated some important points.  In my opinion, I won every argument, but we both agreed to disagree. It makes sense, since he is a historian. He likes the past, and I prefer looking into the future.

But enough about that- I’m taking two other classes: Leonardo Da Vinci and Saints and Sinners.  These are both with the same professor, who is quite the character. I wish I could explain her in words, but it’s somewhat difficult. My friend Dani does a great impression of her, so if you ever meet, have her do it for you. But the classes are interesting. It’s pretty cool to have history classes for a change.

I had a really nice weekend. I actually didn’t go anywhere on Friday for a change (Did I mention we never have classes on Fridays?). This was actually really nice because IT’S FREEZING HERE. Ok, I know it’s about as cold as it would be back at home, but it’s just different ok? But I stayed in for most of the day and got caught up on work/sleep (mostly sleep…). Julia (mostly Julia) and I made risotto (she hates hearing me pronounce risotto because apparently I butcher it). But it was so good. We then ended the evening with an exhausting dance party (we’re crazy). But overall, it was a really relaxing day.

Italians having a snowball fight (this is as good as it gets for them...)

Saturday was our Foods day trip to Firenze! We rose at an ungodly hour (dance parties can have a profound effect on you) and hopped on the bus to Florence. We met up with Simon there and first walked to a chocolate shop. We got some free samples, and wow. I may or may not have bought a few extra for the road.

Firenze!!!!

Walk over to restaurant!

It was really cold. Really.

Waiting to eat our meal!

We then made our way to the restaurant where we met one of the most famous chefs in Florence: Chef Alessi. So apparently this guy has a bad temper and was let go from his restaurant (Simon was willing to bring him to Perugia for us, he’s that good). But good fortune was upon us, and Chef Alessi was invited back to the restaurant. I braced myself when we met him, but turns out he is actually quite pleasant (from my small impression of him)! But anyways, he explained the menu to us in Italian, while Simon translated. Simon was literally drooling when he told us what it was going to be.  It was a lot of food.  So as a disclaimer, my description of food is not quite up to par with that of a food critic- but just go with it. The first course served was pasta cooked with A LOT of ginger. It was a tad overwhelming- but I did appreciate the first few bites. Then, came a potato dish that was similar to mashed potatoes. We then had a meat with a REALLY peppery sauce (really peppery…). Then, came my favorite part. It was this spicy turkey cooked with a sweet/spicy squash. The two together was a wonderful sensation (I tried coming up with a better description there about how it tickled my pallet, but I gave up). Then was dessert, it was excellent. It was like this cream tart with pine nuts. I was fully satisfiedJ. We regretfully made our way back to Perugia.

But the next day was great. Julia and I signed up for this free museum tour of Perugia so we got to see the National Gallery, Exchange Guild (frescoes by the famous Perugino), the Palazzo della Penna Museum (which had a great modern art exhibit and a photo exhibit on Perugia in the 50’s), and the Archaeological Museum.  I didn’t even know these museums were here! But they were so cool and I actually learned a lot haha. My favorite part was this fresco that portrayed this famous (probably untrue) Perugian story about how the Perugians threw a calf down to their enemies who were attacking. This caused the enemies to realize that the Perugians were so rich that they could literally throw down their own food sources to keep enemies at bay- so this caused them to back down.  So, you better think next time before I throw my sandwich at you.

Later that night we went to Elfo’s (a bar) at MIDNIGHT to watch the Superbowl (pics below).  We started off pretty strong, but were pretty much zombies by the end of it (4:00-ish). But it was a ton of fun, and I was pretty happy about the Giants win (I wasn’t exactly a pocketful of sunshine for my 9 am the next morning though...).

Excited for the game??

That may or may not be ours...

Sorry, none of these pics are from later on in the evening.
 I felt no need to document it.

Monday was pretty normal. After my classes ended I went walking around the (still FREEZING) city by myself for a while. It was actually really nice. It gave me time to see places I’ve never been to, as well as gave me an opportunity to practice my Italian (I went to a grocery store, and these women were trying to explain what balsama- conditioner was, in Italian, it was around a 15 minute process…). Later that night we had a pizza workshop, where we learned all about, and how to make pizza. We each got our own pizza (I got my usual truffle pizza). It was great.

Julia making pizza.

We get to choose our own pizza!
We chose the most expensive one because we already paid for it.

Right now it is Tuesday, even though I’ll post this on Wednesday. But tonight my friends are making some sort of Tortellini Alfredo dish I think (alfredo is pretty much 100% American by the way), and we are watching V for Vendetta. I might also hang out with my new found Italian friends (yea I guess im cool). But we’ll see!

Oh shout out to my little brother Jake for turning 6! And shout out to my Aunt Mary who I hear is reading this as well!

Happy Birthday Jake!!! (Best Friends)

This is Emilia signing off,

Ciao!!